Publishing your webpage
Publishing your site.
To publish a website, you will need:
- Hosting space on a server
- FTP access to the server (a username and password)
- A domain name
Generally, a hosting company will sell you server space and a domain name as a package. Domain name registration should cost about $10, but hosting costs can vary wildly depending on your needs. For most purposes, some space on a shared server will be enought (on a shared server, your site won't be the only one running on the computer). Hosting will tend to cost about £5 a month.
There are tons of hosting companies and most offer similar services. The only hosting companied I've had any experience with are Dreamhost and Bluehost, which have both been excellent. You can often get good offers for your first year of hosting by searching for a voucher. Googling 'Dreamhost voucher', for example, returns lots of offers of $97 off your first year.
Once you've bought hosting space, you'll get sent FTP (file transfer protocol) details which will allow you to access the space on the server. If you buy a domain name at the same time as the hosting space, it will be mapped to a folder on the host. Any files you put in this folder will be visible on the web at your domain. If you buy a name and hosting separately, you'll need to make sure that the domain name is mapped to the server space. This is called DNS mapping, and can generally be done though a 'web panel' (the web interface provided by your host which allows you to change settings for your site).
FTP
FTP is a method of uploading your site files to your server. It's not the only way, or the most secure, but it's nice and simple. We can configure Dreamweaver to act as our ftp client. If you're not using Dreamweaver, you might want to try the excellent Fire FTP plugin for firefox.
To configure Dreamweaver to upload our site, we go back to the menu we started on in week 1: Site > Manage Site. Select the site you set up, and click edit. Make sure you're in 'Advanced' mode, and select 'Remote Info' from the Categories box on the left.
Enter your domain name as the ftp host, then your login (your ftp username) and password. It's a good idea to use secure ftp if you can - it will prevent your username and password from being sent to your server as plain text (which would mean other people could intercept it). Click the 'test' button to make sure your settings are working - it should tell you "Dreamweaver connected to your web server successfully.
You might also want to click the 'upload files to server on save' box. With the option, everytime you save a file which is part of your site, Dreamweaver will upload it to your server too.
With your FTP connection set up within Dreamweaver, you can toggle between 'Local view' and 'Remote View' in your file menu (on the right hand side). This allows you to see files on your server, and upload / download them as you work. Use the up and down arrows to 'put' files on the server, or to 'get' files from the server.